Posted by Jackie M. on February 05, 1999 at 10:58:05:
In Reply to: Another reminder of why I like Australians posted by Jack Boyd on February 05, 1999 at 08:23:30:
Dear Jack,
With all due respect, I do not believe that pain tolerance has anything to do with one's national origin. In fact, we do not have total control over pain tolerance. We must accept that there are differences in every human body which can not be controlled. Females, because of their hormones, respond differently to pain as reported to JAMA on July 8th. In the Journal of the American Medical Association researchers studying rats found that females have lower tolerance to pain than males. Actually using implants of male hormones for the female rats, and female hormone implants for the male rats reversed this. This may hold the key to understand why some women have different pain tolerance at different times during the menstrual cycle and different tolerance after ovarian removal. (I know one woman who actually had a total hysterectomy in order to alleviate the pain of her clusters) Genes apparently control this as well. Perhaps this is why some women breeze through labor easily in spite of no medications and others seem only to tolerate the contractions with edications or epidurals. (Another explanation might be how the flucuation of hormonal levels throughout pregnancy and delivery vary from woman to woman.)Exactly how pain is treated varies greatly between sexes. But it is important to note that pain tolerance is not soley about control or personal accomplishment. It is also about physiological factors with which we are born and over which we have no control.
I have a deep respect for *everyone* here, no matter their individual pain tolerance. They are all soldiers in the cluster war.
Respectfully,
Jackie M.